Dear Boulder City Council,
We hope that you will carefully review the City’s past experience with mail-ballot-only elections. You will find that the City has documented that mail ballot elections are much more expensive than traditional precinct voting elections.
With a little effort, you will also find that mail ballot elections are not secure, not accurate, not anonymous, and not verifiable. In other words mail-ballot-only elections are not suitable for conducting public elections.
More than 60 percent of Boulder County voters recently voted against Amendment 28 which would have mandated the exclusive use of mail ballot elections. The people do not trust voting by mail ballot. Voters understand that in a traditional precinct voting election they are allowed to choose to vote early or vote by absentee ballot – at their own discretion.
Boulder voters should not be forced to vote using the defective mail-ballot-only voting system that is not secure, accurate, anonymous and verifiable, and that costs more than precinct voting, and deprives voters of their choice of which method works for them.
Elections are not about cost or convenience to election officials. They are about trustworthy results. Trustworthy results require that elections be secure, accurate, anonymous, and verifiable.
I am among the many voters who do not trust mail ballot elections. The following article from Today’s NY Times contains some thought to contemplate. There are many more.
While it is true that Council has the power to force voters to vote using mail ballots, we hope that you will not exercise this power.
Give us an election that we can trust.
